For the past couple of years I have gone out in January and June with a group of bat surveyors. But this year my friend Jean-Claude, who organises our bi-annual bat surveys, has emailed me to say there will be no surveying this year or next. Surveying bats, particularly if they are hibernating or raising young, inevitably disturbs them, and the local bat conservation experts feel that they need to be left in peace for a while. We have quite good data from the previous years surveys, so the bat experts can focus on number crunching and other projects.
Just in case you will miss the bats, here are some photos to be going on with:
Greater Horseshoe Bat.
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| Photo courtesy of my sister. |
A maternal roost of Lesser Horseshoe Bats.
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| Photo courtesy of my sister. |
A grounded Pipistrelle Bat.
A Soprano Pipistrelle Bat on the wing.
Here are some links to previous posts about bat surveys:
Bat Surveying in the Touraine Loire Valley
Hanging From the Ceiling
Bats Spurn the Belfries
2 comments:
I was closing our shutters against the hot afternoon sun last summer when 4 bats flew out. They had been nesting behind the shutters, which I thought strange as it must get very hot and we have a cool cave. Anyway, I fastened the shutters open and the next day they were back. We opened them at night so they would find a new home. Fascinating creatures.
Bats like to roost behind shutters in the summer. I have a friend who has a maternity roost behind some rarely used shutters. They generally only use caves to hibernate.
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